Re: [gcmd-dev] Gnome Commender compiles, installs and runs on Ubuntu Mate 20.04

[mi]

Congrats Ken ! :D that was a laborious strenuous piece of work !

I'm still not there myself, but certainly will make use of these info some day 
later.

By the way, you can always add a 'launcher' to any gnome / mate desktop panel 
or as a background icon, and fill in the path to gcmd executable.

About this line

> sudo apt-get install build-essential itstool gawk libxml2-utils 
> libglib2.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgnomevfs2-dev

i wondered who exactly needs itstool ? I can see only yelp-tools here but i 
never had that installed in ages. Does anyone really use it ?? And it doesn't 
seem like automake / autotools need it.


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Just for the records. If you install libs like that, they might beomce an 
obstacle later, because they were explicitly installed and will not be removed 
if you for example remove the gcmd package. They are not marked 'auto' = 
installed only as a dependency of another package. Apt will consider this now 
with every update.

You can however manually set this flag anytime like this:

        apt-mark auto <package>

(or use aptituide Shift+M, which by the way can be applied to section titles or 
'folders' in total. For example, to the libs -> main section) which will change 
the apt dependency handling.

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And if you want to cleanup any packages which were installed as a dependency 
and got orphaned, for whatever reason (meaning they are useless now, nobody 
requires them), you can do an

        apt-get autoremove      (no parameter)


Caveat: If you want to keep packages which by package database are already 
obsolete (beause no more anywhere in the used releases) then autoremove might 
ask you to remove these all along.

To avoid this, you need to set such 'obsolete' packages explicitly on 'hold' 
which means, apt will try to not touch them, to great extent, even if it means 
to screw up anything else :D just a joke.

        apt-mark hold <packages>                (or 'h' in aptitude)




I'm not running any Ubuntu but let me add soem tips for plain Debian:

You can drag on old libs / packages keeping them available to some extent, by 
adding lines like this to the /etc/apt/sources.list:

        deb http://deb.debian.org/debian oldstable main contrib non-free
        deb http://deb.debian.org/debian oldoldstable main contrib non-free


It's advised to use the generic names (instead of jessie, stretch, buster) so 
that you never have to update that configuration. The trade off is that it will 
be 'rolling' of course.

You can set a release to be preferred in the dependency resolver, making it the 
'release focus', in a file (just create it) like 
/etc/apt/preferences.d/preferred

containing just this:

        Package: *
        Pin: release a=testing
        Pin-Priority: 1001


ps. Ken i see your CC but do you really want to be cc'd from list replies ?